Nielsen is a fabled name in television ratings history, but in
smaller markets like Arkansas, it has long been the technological
equivalent of a handwritten letter in the Snapchat age.

Participating households fill out a diary of their viewing habits
during ratings periods and mail in their responses.

With newer, more advanced rating tools, KATV News Director Nick
Genty can punch up details of what Arkansans are watching second by
second, with a level of detail that amazes TV veterans.

His new tools, comScore and Sorenson, are technology-based
analytics that offer Little Rock's ABC affiliate much faster
results and far wider statistical samples.

Sorenson, a ratings metric that's actually built into smart
TVs, gives Genty and his colleagues at the Sinclair-owned station a
granular view of their audience in near real time, and a glimpse of
their competitors' viewership.

"Nielsen in this market is still handwritten, and after the
ratings period closes, I have to wait three weeks to get any
results," Genty said. "And we get like an 8 percent return
rate to make programming decisions on. In smaller counties, or even
targeted counties, you might get six or 10 books back. So you're
making decisions based on 10 people who hand-wrote out what they watched
on TV."

Among KATV's competitors, KARK dropped the Nielsen service
altogether several years ago; KTHV is still a subscriber. Other TV
stations around the country have abandoned Nielsen in recent years, and
it's no longer the ratings bible it became after initiating TV
analytics in 1950, when "Texaco Star Theater" on NBC was the
most-watched show on the 10 million TV sets in use at that time.

In 2018, however, Nielsen's small-market methods seem
increasingly antiquated compared with comScore and Sorenson Media, which
collects anonymized data from millions of smart TVs under a deal with
Inscape, a subsidiary of the privately held TV maker Vizio.
"Sinclair is still part of the Nielsen family, but with comScore we
have about 120,000 connected homes in the market that provide data"
largely gathered from satellite dish services and multichannel video
programming distributors, said General Manager Mark Rose. "We get
reliable data about a week later, and two weeks later, the reliability
is really strong." How strong? "Strong enough to be sellable
to advertisers," Genty said.

Sorenson, which had enlisted more than 80 U.S. stations by October
2017, lets Genty and Rose know exactly when viewers tune in and where
they're coming from, as well as when they leave and what
programming drew them away. "You can go second by second, which is
kind of daunting," Genty said.

Rose said he can't compare costs among Nielsen, comScore and
Sorenson because "Sinclair negotiates for the entire group."
But KATV is sold on the system, which it has used extensively for about
a year. "We can show a screen of our newscast and a chart of the
Sorenson numbers side by side with a competitor," Rose said.
"We overlay the data with comScore and Nielsen's market
research, and we can look across the street at the reactions our
competitors are getting, what's resonating with their viewers, and
how the audience is reacting to content. Research is never 100 percent
certain, but we can track the numbers and find continuity."

Sorenson's potential in targeted advertising is also immense,
Rose said. "They continue to expand in this smart television world,
and soon broadcasters and marketers will be able to offer advertising
with addressable content. So if you're watching the news in Little
Rock and your brother is watching in Conway, he may see a Caldwell
Toyota spot in Conway while you'll have a Crain Automotive ad
running in the same commercial break. From a news standpoint, things
like tornado warnings and Amber alerts could be directed at just certain
areas, allowing people elsewhere to keep watching their regular
programming."

The numbers also help Genty in coaching reporters. "If
they're telling me they need five minutes to tell a story, I can
show them how viewership falls after a couple of minutes," he said.

By any measure, the KATV news team loves ratings, not least because
they lead the pack. At 6 a.m., according to November's numbers,
KATV's "Daybreak" had a 22.7 percent share, compared with
17.57 for KTHV and 13.36 for KARK. At 6 p.m., Channel 7's newscast
had a 21.1 share to 11.92 for KARK and 10.11 for KTHV.

Those numbers, by the way, are from comScore. KATV stopped citing
Nielsen in its news releases in mid-2017.

KMassey@ABPG.com

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